The Verge did a really solid interview with Matt Mullenweg, who founded WordPress, open-sourced it and its ancillary companies, and later bought Tumblr from Verizon. The interview is framed by the parallels to Musk buying Twitter, and it’s a refreshing look at a founder/leader who isn’t a douchey techbro and who still believes in an open, safe, and inclusive web. (WordPress is the engine that runs this and over 40% of the websites on the internet.) In the article he talks about how hard it is to do content moderation well—his experience to that point had mostly been building the software, not policing the content:
I will say that it was probably the most humbling thing in my business career… Tumblr is a large-scale social network that is only a fraction of the size of Facebook, but we started encountering issues that were beyond my previous understanding of content moderation and free speech.
I think the biggest difference here, and one that most people are only beginning to realize, is that Musk bought Twitter to control what people are saying about him, not to preserve or protect its users. He’s now in a race to monetize this millstone as fast as he can before it flames out due to his terrible leadership; as he kicks journalists off the platform (one of its key audiences) I wonder if it will die back to Truth Social or Parler size.
To Mullenweg’s credit, he’s spent several years trying to sort Tumblr out, losing money the whole time, but he’s committed to rebuilding it in some shadow of its former self.
Twitter became a lot more about arguing, Instagram became about showing off, and Facebook became about weird people you went to school with saying weird things. Tumblr always had this frisson, this magic.
I think most people agree that Tumblr was mostly for porn, but there were a lot of communities and sub-groups active on there that left when it was bought by Verizon. It was a handy platform to stand up a blog and share things quickly, and the repost function became its superpower. We’ll see how it shakes out with a new focus and some careful management. And based on this interview, I’m optimistic for them.
Death Cab for Cutie and the Postal Service are playing a 20th anniversary tour for the albums Transatlaticism and Give Up. They’ll be at Merriwether Post Pavilion (10 miles from here) in September. I am very much considering going to see this show.
Update: the presale was this morning; I just spent ten minutes waiting for Ticketmaster to send me a fucking code to “verify” my account; when I got in I was able to add three lawn tickets, get to the checkout, and enter my credit card information only for their system to bonk and make me do it again. In the 2 minutes it took to re-order the tickets, they “sold out”. FUCK TICKETMASTER
There’s something impressive about seeing a theater company mount a production and watching it work from a pure entertainment standpoint but also from a logistical/production background. We went to see the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company’s production of A Christmas Carol downtown on Saturday with Karean and Zachary. The venue is in a building across the street from my old office on Redwood Street, which began as a bank, was renovated as a disco, and then was bought for the theater company and rebuilt. The tiered seating is set up almost vertically, so we were on the second level and sitting almost over the stage. We were able to watch the cast both perform and be stagehands, carefully introducing and removing various props while they were performing; it was like watching a tightly choreographed dance and I enjoyed every minute of it. They seamlessly wove music, singing, and even a Stomp-style rhythm into the play, and every cast member was fantastic—how refreshing it was to see so many people of color as the leads! It was an excellent production and I would definitely return for serious Shakespeare.
We had a great time with K&Z, stopping in after the play at an old Canton haunt called Nacho Mama’s, where we spent way too much time, money, and brain cells when we lived in the neighborhood. The man who founded it died ten years ago and I’d wager it’s changed hands since then, because the vibe, menu and quality have all slipped. I don’t think we’ll be going back, and I will miss Mesa Fries for the rest of my life.
Following some recent comments about video games and ramping difficulty levels, I’ve been playing a Season event in The Division 2, where there are a series of challenges that lead up to four minor boss fights, which then unlocks a major boss fight. I did the last Season primarily solo, as is my usual MO, and found the ramp to the boss fights achievable and challenging. Far from a simple walkthrough, I had to work at the boss fights but they were a solid test of my skills to that point and ultimately I enjoyed finishing it. When they rolled out this new season, I started with the first challenge and got to the minor boss fight; with a bit more work I was able to beat it and move on to the second challenge. It was there I got my ass completely handed to me. By default they ramped the difficulty level up to Heroic, which is four steps above “you will need nuclear weapons to beat this.” As mentioned before I like to play solo, but there was no way I could beat these bosses by myself. Last night I joined another player who was playing solo against one of the boss challenges, and between the two of us we took him down. I suggested we take on the third boss, and soon we were joined by two more players who helped us along. We all died multiple times but in the end we all finished it. There’s one more miniboss to beat and then it’s on to the main event; hopefully I can find some other players to help finish the season.
Meanwhile, the search for a new game continues. I did find one that I thought might be interesting to play, but it turns out it’s only written for the PlayStation or PC.
As mentioned earlier, there are nine new windows leaned up against the wall in the garage, waiting for installation. Between the holidays, work schedule, and family commitments, I may not be able to get any of these in before the middle of January, but I do intend to try. The first room up will be Finn’s; she has three circa 1925 windows which insulate about as well as a wet towel. I can’t wait to get the new ones in place and test the difference in both heat retention and soundproofing.
This is a lovely tribute to the late Adam Schlesinger, by his bandmates in Ivy, who I’ve written about before. They talk about their early years, who he was, and what drove him to create. It’s a really thoughtful tribute.
I spent a little time in ProCreate learning some more tools and working on another shirt design for the holidays. I’m about 75% happy with it, both for content and execution. I’d like to move towards more vintage designs to take advantage of the resurgence in antique trucks and Scouts in particular, but more practice is required.
Today I’m on Week 27 of my Invisalign trays, which means I’ve done a half a year with them so far. Looking at both the trays and my teeth I have to be honest and say that I don’t see a huge difference yet. This is not to say that my teeth don’t hurt on Thursday mornings when I take the new trays out; my eyeteeth are screaming bloody murder for the first 2-3 days and then things settle down. There was a period where I was certain my two front teeth were straightening out but that seems to have stalled as the trays continue to push my side molars out to make room for everything. I was getting discouraged, and then went for a checkup to the orthodonist, who assured me everything was going smoothly. The then handed me three more boxes of trays and sent me home. I opened up the final box to compare the trays and saw that by week 70(!!?!!) things should be straight and even. If my shitty math is correct, I’ll see a major improvement by next October.
I drove down to Bob’s on Saturday to continue working on the drywall in the upper hallway, and I took the CR-V. Curious to see what kind of mileage she was getting, I noted the odometer reading when I filled up before leaving town and then when I topped it off before returning home. She’s getting 22.5MPG, which is right in the middle of the US Department of Energy’s listed averages for the model (technically she’s doing better than the other manual models listed). For 150K miles, that’s a good sign; the engine still has power and the clutch is still strong. We did notice that there’s some water intruding into the cabin on the driver’s side at the bottom of the door, so I’ll have to look into a replacement gasket for the door to see if that seals things up.
Bob’s hallway shaped up a lot better that I was expecting; he’d asked us to pull the wallpaper off the walls a couple of months ago and mentioned hiring someone out to do it; I don’t want to subject workmen to his supervision so I’ve been tackling a lot of this stuff myself. The wallpaper came off after some pretty bloody fighting, leaving a cratered battlefield in its wake. I hit all of the walls with an orbital sander and then mudded the divots to smooth things out. After block sanding it all, I primed everything twice and fixed a couple of small issues in a few areas. All that’s left is a 5″x5″ square of 3/4″ drywall to patch a hole and a small area over one door, and the whole thing should be done. Next I’ve got to climb up into his attic and reorganize the insulation, which is all cattywampus and not covering the ceiling evenly.
I brought this up in 2005 and I think it bears repeating, especially as I hear it more and more from insanely intelligent people I work with on a daily basis: Please quit using the phrase “your guys’s” in any context or situation possible. e.g., “I want to send your guys’s information via email.” FUCK YOU. I’m currently sitting in an Asana training course and the woman leading the session has used it twice in five minutes. I might have to murder someone; it’s like someone is shoving a chainsaw in my ear.
The Patterson Bowling Center, a duckpin bowling center near my old neighborhood, is in danger of being shut down to make way for a condo.
An unpretentious community fixture where bowlers of all ages came to play a traditional Baltimore game, Patterson Bowling Center opened in 1927.
“I loved what it stood for and I love what it brought to that neighborhood,” Drayton said. “It stood for everything Baltimore.”
Duckpin bowling began around the start of the 20th century, but its geographic origins are muddy. Popular legend in Baltimore says that 1890s Orioles John McGraw and Wilbert Robinson invented duckpin at their alley The Diamond.
There’s a chance it may stay open, in a diminished size, but that’s currently up in the air.
It’s December, and that means we’re deep in the middle of List Season. All the professional knowers and taste arbiters compile lists of 25 Somethings You Should Something and try to out-cool each other by namechecking cultural touchpoints nobody has heard of. The big ones never fail to disappoint; reading Stereogum’s 50 Album list isn’t quite as pretentious as Pitchfork, but the vast majority of artists are unknown to me. Happy to see Drug Church, Beach House, Soccer Mommy, and Spiritualized(!!) on this list; he ratio of bands I’ve listend to this year to bands I’ve heard of to who is this? is about 5:15:35 in the list of 50. Get Off My Lawn, etc.
One good thing these lists provide is isolating some new music worth checking out, which I will do after triangulating across several of them.
We went to Finn’s chorus recital last night, which was quite lovely and mercifully short; spending more than an hour in a gymnasium with 400+ people in winter coats can get pretty close pretty quickly. They did well; there were only a few off-key notes across three grades, which was a blessing. Watching young gawky middle-schoolers file on and off the bleachers and giggle with each other reminded me of a time when the music program at school was my lifeline; all of my new friends were part of the band, orchestra or chorus. Our high school had a serious music program, something I was invited to early—I played upright bass for the high school orchestra in 8th grade, when I was technically still in junior high. The concerts were always fun but what I remember the most was that incredible time after the concerts, when my friends and I would go and hang out at the diner, jamming ten people in a 4-top booth to share a plate of fries and nurse a coffee under the watchful glares of the waitresses, laughing and killing time together until curfew hit. That feeling of finally finding a place to fit in was huge, and perhaps because I’ve been jammed in the house for so long, afraid of what the the world has become around us, crashing against the early 50’s question of what have I been doing for 30 years of my life and what does it mean, and thinking about my daughter’s future in all of this, I was feeling giant blue waves of nostalgia for those days of innocent, wide-open freedom.
I’ve had a dozen or so sales on my storefront so far, mainly variants of the Scout II grille designs, which totals out to a pretty depressing amount of money. That’s mostly because I pushed the store during a holiday sale, where the cost of T-shirts (and thus my percentage) was dramatically reduced. And, as you might expect, likes and shares do not equate to sales. I think I have to keep feeding the store with new merch; I hve an idea for a holiday-themed shirt but it’s going to take a couple of days to put together, and I’ll most likely run out of time before the holidays.
During a long call at work where I was mostly listening, I did some housekeeping here at Idiot Central:
- I found a new plugin for sidebar posts and installed it, which means the shortlink categories are back up on the right side of the page. It required the addition of another plugin to work correctly—it’s what they call a “classic widget” and doesn’t work on WordPress 6.X without a backward-looking workaround. Not the best solution, but one that works.
- There was a bit of PHP I wrote at the end of each post which basically looked for any syndicated posts tagged “scout” and both changed the CSS to offset the post and added the explanatory block at the bottom, complete with direct links to that post on the Scout blog. When I updated the PHP engine behind the curtain to 8.0 a couple of months ago, my old code blew up so I had to find the issue there and fix that block.
- Finally, I wanted to remove the Flickr gallery at the bottom of the sidebar (I haven’t posted anything there in months) and replace it with Instagram; this took a couple of extra steps that aren’t in the documentation; what I had to do is hook up Instagram through Jetpack first and then link it up with the widget.
- I added a snippet of code to the functions.php file to supress any posts tagged “shortlinks” in the main feed:
function exclude_category( $query ) {
if ( $query->is_home() && $query->is_main_query() ) {
$query->set( 'cat', '-30' );
}
}
add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'exclude_category' );Where “30” is the category ID number. Because it’s within the main WordPress loop, it doesn’t affect the sidebar feed at all. A nice little hack that ensures I don’t need to add yet another plugin to do something dumb. Via this article.
I’ve been hosting photos here on the site pretty exclusively for the better part of the year. I used to use Flickr exclusively as my photo CDN, so almost every photo here from 2005 until this year is hosted there. Given all that’s been happening with external platforms coming and going, I’ve been thinking I need an automated solution to swap them out for local copies if and when Flickr ever goes away. I’ll have to look into how other people have handled that situation and if there’s a good script I can borrow.
I was watching another video with some clips from the movie Snatch, and this song is the music cue after Brad Pitt’s character Mickey lays out a man twice his size. I loved it when I first saw the movie and finally tracked the tune down: it’s by the Stranglers, an early punk band, in 1982.
Additionally, I’ve got this one stuck in my head alongside it, after finally watching the eponymous movie:
A beautiful, sad, haunting track. I have my issues with Billie Elish’s voice, but this works.